|
As a responsible member of the global community, ITU will join
the UN commitment to lead by example by achieving climate-neutral status
within three years. ITU will continue to promote the use of ICTs to strengthen
and develop scientific and industrial tools in all areas, to the fullest extent
possible, to combat climate change.
In its own activities, ITU is pioneering the use of ICTs to reduce
emissions through paperless meetings, and virtual conferencing and
will share its expertise with other institutions in optimizing the use of ICTs
as a vital component of energy-efficient work methods. ITU will also embark on
raising public awareness to illustrate the impacts of climate change and the
relevance of its work in the field of ICTs to address this issue. |
- ITU has been actively participating in the work of the
Chief Executives Board (CEB) and its subsidiary bodies on developing a
unified and collaborative UN strategy to combat climate change, including a
matrix on activites of each agency and program. This work has included
providing comments and taking part in negotiations on CEB documents,
including the UN Sec-Gen’s paper to the Bali climate change conference,
providing an ITU input document to that conference and press release, and
representing ITU in the UN Environmental Group.
- ITU is monitoring ongoing negotiations under the Bali roadmap and
coordinating its participation in upcoming international events on climate
change, e.g. the Poznan Conference in 2008 and the WMO Conference in 2009.
- The Strategic Planning and Membership Department (SPM) in the General
Secretariat is coordinating efforts to make the ITU climate neutral, pursuant to
a policy established at the CEB, including a carbon audit. The Building
Division has taken a number of practical steps to improve energy efficiency
and to reduce heat-loss, including in the design of the Montbrillant
Building.
- Efforts are underway to move increasingly to paperless meetings and the
IS Department has been providing tools to facilitate remote participation in
ITU meetings (see below).
Remote collaboration tools
For those participating in, or organizing ITU meetings, there are a number of
tools that can be used to substitute for face-to-face meetings, or to facilitate
remote participation in meetings (e.g., for developing countries). These tools
include:
- TIES (Telecom Information Exchange Services) (see: http://itu.int/TIES),
which includes electronic access to restricted documents, email account,
electronic forum etc;
- Other electronic working methods, including informal FTP area and
correspondence groups (see:
http://itu.int/ITU-T/tsag/edh/ifa-structure.html.
- Internet Broadcast System (IBS). Many ITU meetings are now broadcast
over the web, either with or without restrictions on access, and many have
sound and or video archives available for consultation. For instance, the
archives for the September 2007 workshop on multimedia in NGN are available
online at:
http://itu.int/ibs/ITU-T/200709multimedia.
- E-learning. ITU conducts many different courses each year through
e-learning, organized both by the HQ in Geneva and the regional offices
(see:
http://itu.int/ITU-D/hrd/elearning).
- Remote participation tools. ITU is currently evaluating two popular
remote participation or groupware packages, and these are available to
meeting organizers (e.g., for organizing meetings of rapporteurs, offering
webinars etc). These include GoToMeeting (see: www.gotomeeting.com) and
WebEx (see: www.webex.com), For more information see the TSAG liaison
statement on remote participation tools (TSAG-LS-32).
Information dissemination tools
ITU offers a number of information dissemination tools to its members, including
websites, bulletin boards, email reflectors, forum discussions, newslogs,
interactive calendars etc. One recent innovation is the use of a wiki created by
the ITU-T Focus Group on Identity Management (see:
http://www.ituwiki.com/ ) and
subsequently used for other purposes. |
